


The Winchester Bestiary

by Siobhan_Schuyler



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-09
Updated: 2006-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siobhan_Schuyler/pseuds/Siobhan_Schuyler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam Winchester was nine, there were monsters under his bed and his dad gave him a .45, a flashlight, and a pat on the shoulder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Winchester Bestiary

When Sam Winchester was nine, there were monsters under his bed and his dad gave him a .45, a flashlight, and a pat on the shoulder. That part you know, but that's not where the story begins.

*

When Sam Winchester was three, he found something in his closet that no one, least of all a three-year-old, wants to find in there. As tall as he is now, he was small for his age then, and besides there is little you can do at three but run and tell someone.

The difference is that Sam Winchester could tell on the thing in his closet by name and even be as bold as to suggest a weapon to exterminate it.

When Sam Winchester was three he found a goblin in his closet and his dad killed it with an ax.

*

When Sam Winchester was five, they were stationary in the middle of noplace. Dad with his leg broken in two places and the three of them stuck here just outside of nowhere till at least September, when Sam would be starting kindergarten like he was going to the moon, and Dean would be trying to avoid fourth grade.

The old chalk quarry was the kind of abyss without a bottom, the kind of hole that went all the way to China, the kind of pit you didn't come out of, ever.

It was the kind of day you could see right through, and the tips of Dean's sneakers shook pebbles loose from the edge of the top of the world. Sammy looked down past their feet, past the sharp drop and the outcroppings of subterranean roots from nearby giants, and saw his first and last real summer. Down there were dangerous things to climb, pink knees to bruise and bony elbows to scrape.

Tucked in the back of Sam's Wranglers was the yellowed bestiary Dean'd just gotten him for his birthday last month, and in Dean's hand an empty shotgun too big for the small fingers that knew it too well (their dad had hidden the ammo since that time in Provo). Between the two of them they could take whatever might lurk down there, whether it was crawfish in the creek or trolls hidden in the rock underbellies.

When Sam was five, he had a whole summer of the kind of days that meant everything.

*

When he was seven and digging a hole in the backyard to get to the next door neighbor's so he could escape the haircut his dad told him he'd get once he got home, Sam Winchester saw something move and skulk and creep in the corner of the yard. Armed to the teeth as he was with the yellowed bestiary Dean had given him two birthdays ago and a bag of sandwiches, Sam tucked a good stick in the back of his belt, gripped the shovel two-handed, and went to investigate.

Sam at seven was no more scary than you or me at seven, but the thing that moved and skulked and crept in the corner of the yard retreated, being confronted with such a contrary victim who felt it necessary to throw rocks and yell things in Latin that felt too accurate for comfort.

The thing slinked away and made a meal of a four-year-old two blocks down. Two days later John Winchester cornered it at the town dump and wasted it. He smelled like rotting fruit for a week.

Sam remembered this for years; it made an impression.

*

When Sam Winchester was nine, there were monsters under his bed and his dad gave him a .45, a flashlight, and a pat on the shoulder. It's a lie grown-up Sam likes to tell himself that he hadn't asked for them in the first place.


End file.
